UCL / FILMBRIGHT
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Dr Dominic Papineau holds a rock sample, estimated to be up to 4.28 billion years old.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id – Life microbes diverse species existed on Earth at least 3.75 billion years ago, according to a new study led by UCL researchers that challenges conventional views of when life began.
For research published in Science Advances On April 13, 2022, entitled “Metabolically diverse primordial microbial communities in Earth’s oldest seafloor-hydrothermal jasper”, the research team analyzed a fist-sized rock from Quebec, Canada, estimated to be between 3.75 and 4.28 billion years old. In a paper in the journal Nature Previously published on March 2, 2022, entitled “Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates,” the team discovered tiny filaments, knobs, and tubes in rock that appeared to be made by bacteria.
However, not all scientists agree that this structure, which is estimated to be about 300 million years earlier than what is more commonly accepted as the first sign ancient lifeis of biological origin.
Now, after further analysis of the rock, the team has discovered a much larger and more complex structure, namely a trunk with parallel branches on one side that is nearly a centimeter long, as well as hundreds of distorted spheres, or ellipsoids, along the tubes and filaments.
D.Papineau
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Concretion of chert hematite (rock rich in iron and silica), which contains tubular and filamentous microfossils. Called jasper, it contacts the dark green volcanic rock at the top right and represents a hydrothermal vent deposit on the ocean floor.
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The researchers say that, while some conceivable structures have been created through coincidental chemical reactions, the “tree-like” trunk with parallel branches is most likely of biological origin, as no chemical-only structure has been found as such.
The team also provided evidence of how bacteria get their energy in different ways. They found mineralized chemical byproducts in the rock consistent with ancient microbes that lived off iron, sulfur, and possibly carbon dioxide and light through a form of photosynthesis that did not involve oxygen.
The new findings, the researchers say, suggest that a variety of microbial life may have existed on ancient Earth, potentially just 300 million years after the planet formed.
“Using many different pieces of evidence, our study strongly suggests a number of different types of bacteria existed on Earth between 3.75 and 4.28 billion years ago,” said lead author Dr. Dominic Papineau of UCL Earth Sciences, UCL London Center for Nanotechnology, Center for Planetary Sciences and China University of Geosciences, as quoted from Tech Explorist.
“This means that life could have started at least 300 million years after Earth formed. In geological terms, this is fast, about one rotation of the Sun around the galaxy. This finding has implications for the possibility of extraterrestrial life. If life emerged relatively quickly, under the right conditions, this increase the likelihood that life exists on other planets.” he added.
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